


Three Awakenings

by Pargoletta



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Medical Examination, Misunderstandings, Nurses, Psychological Trauma, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-27 15:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5054188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first three times that Steve Rogers woke up during his first twenty-four hours in the twenty-first century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to this story! _Captain America: The First Avenger_ is a deeply weird movie in many ways – one notable way is that it’s pretty much a European-theater WWII movie without Hitler. Another notable weirdness is that, for a movie that didn’t flinch at depicting quite a bit of pain, humiliation, torture, grief, and moral ambiguity, it pulled what I think should have been its strongest punch. The movie ended cold right before we saw the impact of Steve’s journey into the twenty-first century really hit him. The final scene _almost_ made it there, the end was in sight, and then . . . roll credits. But how does such news sink in? Especially for someone like Steve, who knows how stories work, and would be pretty genre savvy when it came to science fiction?
> 
> Well. Fools and angels.

**1\. One**

  

 

“At ease, soldier.” 

The familiar command cut through the blur of car horns, motors, the chatter of an enormous crowd of people, and the dizzying array of signs that glowed in blinding colors and that moved faster than his mind could understand. The voice was simple, strong, and human, and Steve responded like the soldier he was. He stopped running and let himself be still. The air was cool, and mist prickled gently against his skin. Steve took a breath that smelled like motor oil, and managed to focus on the source of the command. 

The man was tall and imposing in a black leather duster. One eye was hidden behind a patch, but the other shone with the kind of compassionate force that Steve had only ever seen a few times in the best senior officers he’d known. Whoever he was, this man was a leader. 

“Look,” he said, his gravelly voice softening a little. “I’m sorry about that little show back there. But we thought it best to break it to you slowly.” 

Steve’s heart pounded. Maybe the compassionate gaze and gentle voice were yet another part of the elaborate deception he thought he had escaped. “Break what?” 

The man straightened his spine, as if about to deliver a stunning blow. “You’ve been asleep, Cap.” 

Steve was about to challenge this stranger’s too-familiar address, but the next words brought him up short. 

“For almost seventy years.” 

Steve stared silently at the man for a long moment. The man’s face was completely calm and serious. As fantastic as it sounded, it looked as though he believed that he was telling the truth. And, as Steve looked around at his surroundings, the idea didn’t seem completely far-fetched. The false nurse had claimed that he was in a recovery room in New York City. This place did bear a certain resemblance to Times Square. Steve squinted at the glowing boards, and realized that they were advertisements. The familiar Pepsi-Cola sign was gone, and he couldn’t find the Paramount Theater, but the configuration of the streets looked familiar. 

The cars moving around them were sleek and pointed, and their engine noise was strange, but they were recognizably cars. The people seemed to be either wealthy businessmen or homeless laborers, but they did look like people. In the distance, Steve could just make out the silhouette of the Chrysler Building through the fog. It wasn’t quite how Steve would have pictured the future, if he’d been asked to describe it, but it was close enough. And it certainly seemed plausible compared to some of the things he’d seen and done over the past couple of years. 

“You going to be okay?” the man with the eyepatch asked. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, without thinking. “Yeah. Just.” Some of the fog around his brain was lifting, and memories of a horrible, terrifying conversation had begun to creep into Steve’s mind. “I had a date.” 

He had known even while making it that he wouldn’t be able to keep the date. Why was that? He recalled the sensation of wind in his hair, and the sight of blank whiteness rising up to meet him, and choking out one short, specific prayer. All of a sudden, it struck him; this wasn’t the future. He had crashed a plane into the Arctic. He had died, and this was what came after death. It seemed a strange sort of afterlife, but then, when he thought about it, no one had ever returned to give an accurate picture. The mist in the air seemed very cold now. Steve shivered, and found that he couldn’t stop shivering.

The man in the eyepatch approached him slowly and took his arm. His hand was warm where it touched Steve’s elbow. “You’ve had a shock,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you back inside. No more stage sets. I promise.” 

Steve wasn’t quite ready to follow the man with the eyepatch yet. It might well be that he was simply putting off the inevitable, and, truth be told, the idea of dying had ceased to hold any terror for Steve in the past few days. But if this was the end, he wanted to know it, to walk to his fate with open eyes and a clear heart. 

“Am I dead?” Steve asked. 

“No. Most likely thanks to that serum you got. But we’d like to find out what kept you alive, and we’d like to keep you that way. So why don’t you come with me, and we’ll get you a nice bed to lie down in while we try to figure this out, all right?” 

“All right.” Steve was cold and dizzy, and it seemed easier right now to let the man with the eyepatch lead him away through the streets of this city that was and was not New York. His mind whirled, and settled on another small scrap floating in the chaos.

“Seventy years?” Steve asked. 

“Almost.” 

“What year is it?” 

The man with the eyepatch paused for a moment, as if considering whether or not to answer that question. “2011,” he said at last. 

Steve let out a high-pitched, nervous giggle. “That’s – that’s the twenty-first century,” he managed. “That really is the future.” Someone else had told him, long ago, that he was going to the future. That memory was painful, and Steve shied away from exploring it any further for the moment. His mind lurched and landed on another question. 

“The war.” 

“It’s over. We won.” 

That was good. That was a relief. Whoever the man with the eyepatch was, he was not a HYDRA agent. But, Steve’s mind objected, that still didn’t tell him who the man was. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Nick Fury. And yes, that is my real name. I understand that you might not be inclined to trust me very much at the moment. For the record, the whole thing with the hospital room wasn’t my idea.” 

Nick Fury’s words washed over Steve too fast for him to grasp all of them. He bowed his head and let Fury guide him away from the too-fast cars and the too-bright lights. There was a whoosh, and they were inside a building. The noise of the street outside gave way to the chatter of voices talking in clipped, military tones. The cadences were familiar, and Steve looked up. 

Men and women dressed in black uniforms and caps paused in the entrance hall to look. Steve tried to meet their gaze, one soldier among others, but his head spun, and the crowd seemed to blur before his eyes. A smaller group dressed in boxy green shirts and trousers broke through the crowd and headed toward them. One man pushed a wheelchair, aiming it at Steve with a concerned look in his eye. 

“I can walk,” Steve mumbled to Fury. 

Fury gave him a critical glance and then waved off the man with the wheelchair. “All right,” he said to Steve. “We’ll have the chair nearby if you need it, but you can walk for a bit. Hold on to me, if you need to.” 

“Feels strange.” 

Fury barked out a humorless laugh. “Waking up after seventy years encased in ice and three more days of powerful drugs and modern medical care? I’d say that feeling strange is doing pretty well at this point.” He led them into an elevator, and the man with the wheelchair followed. 

“Where are we going?” Steve asked. 

“Medical. You ran away before the docs had a chance to check you out.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“No, you’re not.” Fury sighed. “Look, just let them examine you and make sure. This is a first for us. We’ve never brought anyone back like this, and they’re going to want to keep records of how you’re doing.” 

That sounded familiar. Steve had undergone similar medical tests in the first few days after he had received Dr. Erskine’s serum, and he could understand that medical people wanted to know more about him. It seemed that, even in the future, no one had managed to figure out Dr. Erskine’s formula. 

The elevator doors slid open, revealing a clean, hospital-white hallway with a pair of doors at the end. The false nurse who had greeted him when he first woke up was waiting for him. Her skirt, blouse, and tie were gone, and she wore the same green shirt and trousers as the rest of the medical squad. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She smiled at him apologetically. 

“Captain Rogers,” she said. “I’m sorry, we didn’t start too well earlier. I’m Lucy Wallace, and I really am a nurse. I’m going to take you in for assessment now.” 

Steve glanced at Fury, who nodded. “Yeah, you can trust her. All of them. I’m the Director of this facility. They all work for me.” 

“All right.” Steve allowed Nurse Wallace to take his arm from Fury, but he waved the wheelchair away. 

“Call me when you’re done with him,” Fury said. He turned to Steve. “They’ll take care of you. You’ll see me again.” With that, he turned back to the elevator. 

Nurse Wallace led Steve down the hall and through the doors that swung open at the push of a button. Although the medical bay was not nearly as overwhelming as the street had been, Steve found that his head ached, and he was still dizzy. He mentioned it to Nurse Wallace when she asked him how he felt. 

“I’ll bet your blood sugar is pretty low, especially from what your records say about your metabolism,” she said. “We’re going to take a few blood samples first, and then we can see about getting you something.” 

She got Steve settled onto an exam table with the head raised. He held out his arm and let the technicians draw several vials of blood, and then Nurse Wallace handed him a cup with a straw in it. When he sipped, he discovered that it was orange juice, and his mood brightened a little with the treat. Nurse Wallace smiled at him. 

“Yeah, okay, I thought that was part of it,” she said, and ticked something off on a clipboard. “You’re probably a bit dehydrated, too. I’d like to hold off on IV fluids for now, but I want you to promise to drink lots of water over the next few days. We’ll put a pitcher in your room.” 

Steve nodded and took another pull at his orange juice. It was sweet and cold, and he would have sucked it all down in one gulp, but his stomach rebelled at the idea. No one seemed inclined to take the cup away, so Steve decided that it would be all right to humor his insides and sip the juice slowly. A woman wearing a white lab coat stepped up to his side. “Captain, I’m Doctor Jennifer Cohen. I’d like to do a top-to-toe physical assessment, and some brief neurological checks as well. Is that all right? If you’re uncomfortable, we can get you a male doctor.” 

Steve had never had a lady doctor before, but Doctor Cohen’s hands were small, and he thought that she might have a gentle touch. “It’s fine,” he said. “I don’t mind.” 

Doctor Cohen examined him gently but firmly, looking in his ears, eyes, and throat, tracking his vision, listening to his heart and lungs with her stethoscope, making him push his hands, feet, and head against her gentle resistance, and prodding him all over his body. When she was finished, she wrote a few brief notes on her clipboard, and smiled at him. 

“I think you’re basically fine,” she said. “You’re still woozy from the coma and the drugs we used to sedate you while we warmed you up, and you’re exhausted in a way that’s pretty much like really terrible jet lag. But all of your injuries from the crash seem to have healed, and you’ve come through the re-warming process pretty much intact. One more thing, before I call Director Fury and let you go.” She handed him a small clear cup. “I’d like a urine sample. Carl here will show you where the toilet is, and he’ll stand by if you need any help.” 

Steve managed to produce the sample without Carl’s direct assistance, and Doctor Cohen called Fury, as she had promised. He arrived within a few minutes, just as Steve was putting his shirt back on. 

“How are you feeling, Captain?” he asked. 

“Tired.” Steve frowned. “I didn’t expect to be this tired just after waking up.” 

“That wasn’t normal sleep,” Doctor Cohen pointed out. “Your body has actually been through an inhuman amount of stress. Without your enhancement, you wouldn’t have survived at all. As it is, you’re completely exhausted, and you need rest more than anything else. Rest and fluids.” She turned to Fury. “We can keep him in Medical if you’d like, but he doesn’t need to stay here.” 

Fury nodded to her. “Thanks. I had one of the overnight rooms made up for him. Room G3, if you want to monitor.”

“Gotcha. Go get some real sleep, Captain. You’ll feel better in the morning.” 

Steve managed a brief smile. “Thanks, Doctor. Let’s hope I don’t wake up another seventy years into the future.” 

Doctor Cohen snorted. “Looks like we got a sense of humor back, too. Go put him to bed, Director.” 

Steve followed Fury out of the medical bay and into the elevator. Fury led him down several floors and through a long, featureless hallway until they came to a door marked G3. Inside was a small room with a twin bed, a desk, a chair, a lamp, a nightstand with a carafe of water and a dial-less telephone, and a dresser. “Bathroom’s through there,” Fury said, pointing at a door on the far wall. “You’ll find fresh clothes in the dresser. When you wake up tomorrow, dial 2375 – just push the number buttons on the phone – and I’ll send someone to get you some food and schedule a debrief. Anything else you need?” 

Steve felt as though he would fall asleep on his feet at any minute. “No, thank you, sir.” 

“All right, then. Get some rest. Dial 1111 if you have an emergency in the night.” 

Fury left, closing the door behind him. Steve stumbled over to the bed, removed his shoes, socks, and pants, and crawled under the covers. It took him a few moments to figure out how to switch off the light, but he managed. The room was pleasantly cool, and the bed was soft and warm. Steve was alive, and just at the cusp of an interesting adventure, and there was something unpleasant nagging at the back of his mind, but he was far too tired to think about anything right now, and the nagging would just have to wait. 

Within minutes, Steve was asleep.


	2. Two

**2\. Two**

  

 

A beam of sunlight crept between the blinds and shone directly in Steve’s eyes, bringing him out of the depths of sleep. He was wrapped in a blanket, lying in a soft, unfamiliar bed. For a moment, he lay still, blinking in the light, enjoying the rare sensation of coming awake almost entirely unprodded, cocooned in soft warmth. He noticed that his head felt tender, a reminder of some terrible headache earlier. Had he actually managed to get drunk enough to have a hangover? 

A nagging pressure in his bladder suggested that the drinking part was entirely plausible. Slowly, Steve disentangled himself from the blankets and sat up. He scrubbed a hand over his face and wondered if it was possible to have the fleeting ghost of a hangover. A dim memory surfaced, of a man pointing out the closed door on the other side of the room. Steve hauled himself to his feet and stumbled over to investigate. 

Fortunately, the door opened to reveal a small bathroom, sleek and ultra-modern in design. It was not until Steve had taken care of business and returned to the bedroom that he recalled his jumbled, confused adventure of the previous day. He had crashed the plane, blacked out, and woken up in a strange place. There had been a commanding man with an eyepatch called Nick Fury who claimed that it was the year 2011. Steve sat heavily on the bed and dropped his head into his hands, trying to parse that idea. 

He wasn’t entirely sure how he had come to be in the future, but he did remember that there were lots of machines, and that things glowed in eye-searingly bright colors. The colors at least made sense; half of the things he had seen at the Stark Exposition had been painted in gaudy, enticing shades. He wondered if Stark had managed to perfect his flying car. He didn’t remember having seen any, but then, he hadn’t spent that much time looking up, which was, after all, where one would expect to see flying cars. 

Steve glanced around, and noticed the telephone, full of complicated buttons, on the nightstand. Sitting next to it was a carafe of water and a glass. His mouth was dry, and he thought he remembered someone telling him to drink lots of water, so he poured himself a glass. The first sip soaked straight into his mouth and did nothing but alert his body to how dehydrated it really was. Steve gulped down the water in the glass and then drank the rest, straight from the carafe. After he had swallowed the last drop, Steve glanced around, guiltily glad that no one had seen him do that. He felt much clearer in the head, as if the water had washed away a layer of dust and cobwebs from the dark corners of his mind. 

But with clarity came horror as well. Steve was alone at the moment, and he was alone because he had crashed a plane, and he had crashed a plane because he had gone after Johann Schmidt, and he had gone after Schmidt because Bucky – 

Steve barely had time to set the carafe down instead of dropping it as his hands and feet went numb. He curled up on the messy bed and buried his face in his pillow to muffle the strangled cries that welled up in his chest. Bucky was dead, and Steve was adrift, and death held no terror for him any more. He lay there until he was sure that he had swallowed back the urge to scream. The bed smelled of sweat and sleep, and Steve figured that he probably stank of much more than that. The bathroom had a tub with a shower, he recalled. Cleaning himself up would give him something to do, at least. 

The water in the shower was warm, a delicious treat after the uncertainty of camp bathing. Steve allowed himself the luxury of standing under the spray for a while, letting the water flow over his body, carrying his thoughts with it. 

He was in the future. As strange as that sounded, as much as it seemed like one of the stories in those science fiction magazines that Bucky liked to buy, it was the most plausible explanation for how he had come to be in this room, in a city that was foreign but oddly recognizable as New York, alive and well after falling out of the sky. Bucky would have liked a story like this, Steve thought. He could just imagine reading it in one of Bucky’s old copies of _Amazing Stories_. The All-American Hero, saved from certain death when . . . apparently, when he had discovered a time machine, or when benevolent people from the future had appeared to whisk him from the wreckage into the beginning of an adventure. It wasn’t a bad beginning. Maybe he could write the story down and sell it. The Hero would spend some time exploring the future – that was always the fun part of the story – and would wrap up, several pages later, by using something he had learned to go back and Save The Day. 

At that thought, Steve’s body went rigid with shock. He fumbled with the shower controls until he had shut the water off, toweled himself dry, and hurried back into the bedroom. He dressed quickly, hardly daring to breathe for fear that the new idea blossoming in his head would wither and die. He forced himself to think past the debilitating grief of the past few days and to relive the terrible moments on the train when the mission had gone so utterly wrong. 

Bucky had fallen. Bucky had fallen because he had been blown out of the side of the train by a shot from a HYDRA soldier. He’d been shot because he’d been protecting Steve. Steve had thought that he had taken care of all the soldiers on the train, but that one had come crashing into the compartment to surprise them. That had been his mistake, and he would have given anything for a chance to correct it. 

And now he had that chance. He had given his life – or, at least, he had crashed the plane thinking he would die, which he hoped amounted to the same thing – and now he had earned a reward. The people in the future seemed friendly enough, and Steve hoped that, if he asked, they might be willing to set the time machine for a few days before they had originally found him. He could go back knowing that there was one more HYDRA soldier on the train, and he would be prepared, and there would be no surprise shot, and Bucky would not fall screaming to his death. 

Steve shivered all over with the joy of this thought. He could have Bucky back again. They could go after Schmidt together, find a way to stop the plane without crashing it, and then they could go home, and Steve could tell Bucky all about the fantastic things that the future held. He made the bed with military precision while he considered exactly what he would need to do in order to stop the HYDRA soldier from blowing Bucky off of the train. He had plenty of time now, but once he returned to the train, there would only be a few seconds, and everything had to work perfectly. He would have only one chance, and there was no way that Steve would survive losing Bucky a second time. 

After a while, he realized that he was hungry. Plans made on an empty stomach were bound to be flawed. Steve reminded himself that he had time to work out the problems. First, he needed to eat something. Fury had said to use the telephone to call when he woke up and wanted food, but Steve had been so sick and exhausted that he had completely forgotten what number to call. He stared at the telephone for a while and tried to remember what the exchange for this part of New York was. Then he laughed at himself, realizing that he could always just call the operator to ask. He picked up the handset and pressed “0.” 

He heard a series of clicks, a buzz, and then a cheerful voice. “This is Alison at reception.” 

Steve smiled. “Um, hello, Alison. I – well, I think I need some help.” 

“What do you need?” 

Now that the question had been asked, Steve thought of just how many things he needed to know, and he choked a little. “Well . . . um. My name is Steven Rogers. Captain, United States Army. I’m . . . kind of new in town, I guess. I’m trying to find a telephone number for a man who – who helped me last night. His name is Nick Fury, and he’s a Director of something. A hospital, I think. A military hospital? He has doctors who work for him.” 

Alison was silent for a moment, and Steve wracked his memory for any more information that might help her. Just as he recalled that the building he was in was close to Times Square – if, in fact, it was still called Times Square – Alison’s voice came back. 

“Captain Rogers, I can tell you that Director Fury is in this building. This is an internal phone system. All you need to do in order to contact someone is to dial their four-digit extension. Director Fury’s extension is 2375. If you dial 0001, you’ll get Directory Assistance, which will help you locate any other extensions you want to call. Does that help?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve said. “Thank you.” 

“Shall I put you through to Director Fury now?” 

“Yes, please.”

Steve heard another series of buzzes, and then a click. “Captain Rogers?” came the gravelly voice from yesterday. 

“Yes,” Steve said. “I assume I’m speaking with Director Fury?” 

“On my line? Yes, you are.” 

“Last night, you said to call you when I woke up. I’m ready whenever you need me.” 

Fury gave a soft chuckle. “How about something to eat? You up for some food?” 

Steve smiled, though Fury wouldn’t see it. “Yes, sir.” 

“Good. Wait in your room, and I’ll send someone to get you.” There was a click, and the line went dead. 

Steve replaced the handset in its cradle, and then went to the window to peek through the blinds. It was full daylight outside. The room he was in was on a high floor, and he could see brightly colored cars moving on the street below. He didn’t see any of them fly, although he supposed that, in the canyons of midtown Manhattan, it might be too dangerous to maneuver flying cars between the buildings. Probably the rich folk kept them to travel near their country homes. He hoped that he would get to see one before he went back to his own time. That would be something to tell Bucky. 

Someone knocked on the door. Steve opened it to find a dark-haired woman dressed in black waiting for him. She smiled, though it seemed forced. “Captain Rogers,” she said. 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“I’m Agent Maria Hill. Director Fury sent me to get you some food and start bringing you up to date with what’s happened. If you’ll come with me, we can get started on the food.” 

“Lead the way,” Steve said. 

Agent Hill took him down the hall into a small lounge furnished with tables, chairs, and sofas. There was a bar at one end of the room, though it was empty. Hill gestured to one of the tables, and she and Steve sat down. 

“You’re looking better today,” she observed. 

“I feel better. What time is it?” 

“It’s nearly noon. Don’t worry about it. You had a lot of stress to sleep off. What would you like to eat?” 

Steve glanced around. There didn’t seem to be any menus, or, in fact, any sign of a kitchen nearby. “I’m not sure. What do people usually have?” 

Agent Hill gave him another distant smile. “You can have whatever you want to eat, Captain. The kitchen is pretty well stocked, and I think the chef likes the occasional challenge. You tell me what you want, and I’ll call the kitchen and have it sent up.” 

That piqued Steve’s interest. Living on Army rations had left him constantly hungry, as well as disappointed in the food that he did get to eat. His mind immediately fixed on the stories that Dernier had told around camp fires, about his brother and sister-in-law, who had run a restaurant near Le Havre before the war. “Could I . . . have something French?”

“Yes, you can,” Hill said. “What would you like?” 

Steve thought for a moment. “I don’t know what it’s called,” he said. “One of my men was telling me about the way his family cooked salmon. They put a cream sauce on it, with parsley, and there’s a salad that goes with it that has oranges in it, and some kind of potato, but I don’t remember what. I never got to try it, but he made it sound so good.” 

Hill nodded. “Not a problem. I’ll call the kitchen, and we’ll get that going for you.” 

Much more quickly than Steve had anticipated, he found himself enjoying his first meal in the twenty-first century. He had baked salmon smothered in a creamy parsley sauce, spinach that gave off an exotic smell of garlic, a fluffy baked potato topped with sour cream, and a salad of orange pieces on a bed of watercress. There was a roll with a pat of butter, a glass of milk, a pitcher of water, and a cup of real, fragrant coffee. Clearly, there was no rationing in the twenty-first century, and people could have as much milk, butter, and eggs as they wanted. This was a meal to be enjoyed to the fullest, before Steve returned to battered cans of flavorless meat stew. 

Agent Hill had a chicken sandwich and a glass of apple juice. She didn’t make much conversation, but watched Steve eat with an expression of faint amusement. “Enjoying it?” she asked. 

Steve nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of salmon. “This is delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything so good. Even at the Automat.” He took a bite of salad, savoring the sweetness of the orange against the peppery bite of the watercress. “Dernier was right,” he said. “I should try more French food.” 

Agent Hill glanced away. “We can arrange that.” 

“And I’d like to see the city. I mean, really see it. Not like yesterday.” 

“You had other things on your mind yesterday.” 

Steve smiled happily into his coffee. “I wonder if the Rockettes are still performing,” he said. “I never did get to see them. But I have a friend who wanted to audition for them.” He hadn’t written to Mildred or to the rest of the dancers in a while, but he thought that they would appreciate hearing about what the art they loved looked like in the future. 

“The Rockettes are still around,” Agent Hill said. The amusement was gone from her face, and she looked both earnest and a little distant. “Just . . . let us know what you’d like. We’re going to help you, so don’t worry about that.” 

Steve polished off the last of the salmon and the spinach, and scooped up some potato and sour cream. He had guessed correctly about the people in the future. “I’d like a pencil and some paper, please,” he said. 

“Of course. Your file said that you’re an artist.” 

“Yeah. I’ve always been able to make plans better if I sketch them out a little.” 

“You have any particular plans in mind? Other than Radio City Music Hall?” 

Steve nodded. Now was as good a time as any to explain what he wanted to do. And Agent Hill seemed to be pretty smart; she might even be able to help him improve on his basic idea. The plan had to be perfect, and as foolproof in execution as possible. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me so far, ma’am,” he said. “Especially this dinner.” 

Agent Hill smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. 

“I’d like to stay for a few days, if it’s all right with you,” Steve went on. “Make some plans. And, if you could help, I’d like to go back to a few days . . . before. We . . . my unit and I, we had this mission, on a train. We did what we went in to do, but I lost a man. Bucky Barnes. Best person I ever knew.” Steve’s eyes and nose started to sting, but he forced it back with a smile. There was no call for tears, not while he was so close to getting Bucky back. 

“I think I could make it work, if I had some time to plan,” he said. “I know what happened, what went wrong, and if you could help me get back to just before it happened, I could do things right. I want to do that mission over again, only this time, get it done and keep Bucky alive. Would you let me stay long enough to plan that? I’d want just a few days . . .” 

Agent Hill was looking at Steve with a terrible expression of dawning horror. It struck Steve that maybe there was some kind of etiquette to time travel that he didn’t know. Maybe people always went back to the exact moment that they’d left. “Just a few days,” he said. “Please, don’t send me back to the plane. That was . . .” He couldn’t find the words to describe it. 

Agent Hill sighed. “Captain Rogers, I’m so sorry. There’s been a misunderstanding.” 

“What do you mean?” Steve’s stomach churned around the fine dinner he had just eaten, and he tasted metal in the back of his mouth. 

“It’s . . . we can’t . . . I’m sorry,” Agent Hill said, and she turned away from Steve. “This is above my pay grade,” she muttered. She pressed a button on her wristwatch and spoke into it. “Director Fury, code twelve. Repeat, Director Fury, code twelve.” 

“I don’t understand,” Steve said. “Please. I only need a few days. I’ll promise not to tell anyone anything I saw, if you don’t want me to. I could do some chores, to pay for –“ 

The door swung open, and Nick Fury walked into the room. “What seems to be the problem here?” he asked. 

“I think I said something wrong,” Steve said, before Agent Hill could make excuses for him. “I asked if . . . I just need to stay here a few days before you send me back. I need to make some plans. I thought that, if you sent me back a little earlier, to the day we were supposed to take the train . . . I wanted some time to think of a way to save my friend. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I want. Please. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I promise I’ll keep the future a secret. I’ll do –“ 

Steve realized that he was babbling, and shut his mouth. Fury looked stricken for a moment, then bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath and raised his head to look Steve in the eye. 

“I’m sorry, Captain,” he said. “I guess we didn’t explain this to you right. You’re not our prisoner. We physically cannot send you back. That’s just not possible.” 

A high-pitched whine of panic buzzed through Steve’s mind. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Can’t I go back the way I came? Through the gate, or the machine, however I got here?” 

Fury shook his head. “There’s no time machine, Captain. You got here the slow way. You’ve been frozen in the Arctic ice for decades, and it was only that serum that kept you alive. The world’s moved on.” 

“But . . . this is the future.” Steve’s mouth was numb, and his hands and feet seemed to detach themselves from his body. 

“I’m sorry,” Fury said again. “There’s a lot of things that are just science fiction. Time travel is only a one-way street. I’m sorry, Captain. We can’t send you back. You’re here permanently.” 

If Fury said anything after that, Steve couldn’t hear it over the thump of his blood pounding in his head. He could never go home. He was trapped, and Bucky was dead, and Steve would never have the chance to set that right, and Steve was alive, but even that was no longer a comfort . . . 

Steve went cold all over, and gasped for air as his vision blurred. He only vaguely noticed when Fury took his arm and led him to a sofa on the other side of the room. Fury’s mouth was moving, but Steve had no idea what was coming out of it. Agent Hill was speaking into her wristwatch again. 

Bucky was dead, and Steve was alive and had failed to save him twice over. Bucky was dead, and there was no one left who would understand or help him keep moving after the crippling blow, and Steve wished with all his soul not to be in the world any more, and then his lungs burned, and his limbs went numb, and that one last wish was granted as Steve fell into oblivion.


	3. Three

**3\. Three**

  

 

“Captain Rogers?” 

A woman’s gentle voice invaded Steve’s ears. 

“Steve?” 

A hand brushed a lock of hair off of Steve’s forehead. Steve was lying on his back on a firm, padded surface, safely wrapped in darkness. 

“Steve, can you open your eyes? It’s time to come back now.” 

The hand on his head stilled, and a second hand patted his cheek gently but insistently. 

“Come on, Steve. Wake up. It’s time.” 

The comforting darkness receded from Steve’s mind, and he forced his eyes open. He was lying on a sofa, upholstered in an ugly pattern, in an impersonal lounge. A middle-aged woman wearing a plain green shirt crouched next to him. She smiled at him when he focused on her. 

“There you go,” she said. “You’re all right. You just fainted, and you’ll be fine in a little bit.” 

Panic seared through Steve’s body. “What year is it?” he choked out. 

“It’s 2011,” the woman said. “You were out for only a couple of minutes.” 

“Who are you?” 

“My name is Cheryl DiMauro. I’m the nurse on call. I’m just going to check your pulse real quick.” She picked up Steve’s wrist and held it for a few seconds. 

In those few seconds of silence, the reality of Steve’s situation returned to sit with suffocating weight on his chest. Somehow, Steve had survived crashing a plane into the Arctic and had slept away an entire lifetime that could never be undone. Bucky was irretrievably dead, and, Steve realized, so was everyone else he had ever known. Dum Dum, Gabe, Dernier, Falsworth, and Jim Morita had all withered and died. He would never see Colonel Phillips squinting in grudging respect, nor hear Peggy Carter’s warm voice, encouraging him with reserved confidence. Howard Stark and his brilliant mind had turned to dust. He would never hear any of Charlie Rudnik’s stories about backstage pranks or admire the way his friends Helen, Dottie, and Mildred danced ever again. 

Steve gulped down painful breaths as he tried to comprehend everything that had vanished. Mr. Horowitz, who had lived in the apartment below Steve’s, would never again bang on his ceiling with a broom when Steve and Bucky made too much noise, and Mrs. Freelander down the hall would never bring over slices of apple cake that she had baked that morning. Bucky’s sisters Becca and Ida had grown up, grown old, and died, and Steve had not been there with them, as Bucky would have wanted. Even the old man who had sold fruit from a cart on the corner was gone. 

“Steve,” Nurse DiMauro said. “Steve, calm down. You don’t want to start hyperventilating again.” 

Steve struggled free of her touch and forced himself to sit up. He was still in the lounge where Agent Hill had given him the best dinner he had ever eaten and where Nick Fury had crushed him with only a few quiet words. He was alive, but everyone else was dead and forgotten. And, he realized, he had died in their minds as well. There was nothing left of Steven Rogers but a revenant, a dybbuk, a dead man who had failed to die. 

Against all sense and reason, there was still breath in Steve’s body, and he let it out in a low, guttural moan. Another one followed, deep and rough, issuing from the darkest core of his chest. Another cry came, and another, and another, and Steve curled in on himself as he screamed out his terror and distress. 

After a while, he became dimly aware that Nurse DiMauro was speaking to him in soft, musical tones. He leaned towards her, and she put her arm around him, the first comforting touch he had had since Peggy had kissed him just before launching him onto Johann Schmidt’s plane. It seemed as though that had been a long time ago, and then he realized that it really had been a very long time ago, and he cried out again. 

“Steve, it’s all right, you’re safe, just keep breathing,” Nurse DiMauro said. Steve turned his face to her shoulder, and she tightened her grip on him. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re safe, and you’re not alone, and you’re going to be all right. Cry as much as you need. Just keep breathing.” 

Steve sucked in breaths and let them out as ragged cries. Gradually, his breathing slowed, and his screams quieted back into moans. When even that gave out, he sat still, shuddering occasionally, clinging to Nurse DiMauro as the one thing that was stable in a world that seemed to teeter around him. She let him hold on to her, and stroked his hair and kept up a soothing stream of words until his body relaxed. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his voice rough and hoarse from screaming. 

“It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to apologize. This is exactly what I’m here for.” 

“Please, stay with me.” 

She smiled. “I’m not going anywhere just yet. Let’s get you more comfortable.” 

Steve did not resist as Nurse DiMauro loosened his grip on her and laid him back down on the sofa. She put a small, hard pillow under his head and spread a bright orange blanket from her box of medical supplies over his legs. “Is that better?” she asked. “How is your body feeling right now?” 

“I don’t know,” he said. “Numb. I can’t feel anything. Except dizzy. I feel like I’m going to fall off the edge of the world.” 

“Then we’ll keep you still and quiet for a bit, see if that lets things settle down.” 

Steve let his body go limp, too worn out to keep his guard up. He reached out, and Nurse DiMauro took his hand and held it. “They’re all dead,” he said, mildly surprised that he’d said it out loud. 

“I know,” Nurse DiMauro replied. “I’m sorry.” 

“This is what happened to Buck Rogers. He fell asleep and woke up in the future. But he didn’t cry.” 

Nurse DiMauro’s mouth flickered into a little smile. “Buck Rogers was a fictional character. You’re allowed to feel whatever you need to feel.” 

At the moment, Steve was deep inside the fuzzy numbness that he recalled from his mother’s death. The pain would come back later, but now he had a small window of silence in which he could talk and learn things almost like a normal human being. “If I can’t go back home, what’s going to happen to me? I don’t think I can stay here forever. I don’t even know where here is, except that it’s in New York.” He eyed Nurse DiMauro’s medical equipment. “Some kind of a hospital, maybe?” 

She shook her head. “Not a hospital, although we do have a full medical center. But that’s just part of this complex. You’re in the New York center of an American government agency called SHIELD, which stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.” 

“Is that part of the OSS?” 

Nurse DiMauro had to think for a moment before she answered. “A daughter agency. I’m a nurse practitioner in the medical sector, and I’m going to take care of you in the short term until we’ve determined that you’re sufficiently recovered from the aftereffects of being revived. I don’t know what the plans are for you after that, though. Director Fury is handling all that personally.” 

Steve took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see Fury, but he also didn’t want to remain trapped in this well of uncertainty any longer than he had to. “Can I talk to him?” 

“You feel like you’re up for that?” 

“I have to know.” 

Nurse DiMauro nodded. “All right. I’ll call him, and you can chat with him for a few minutes. But not too much. I really do want to keep you as quiet as possible for a while. The kind of stress you’re under can do some serious damage to your heart.” 

Steve elected not to mention that his heart was already broken beyond repair, and had been even before he forced the nose of Schmidt’s plane downward. He let go of her hand, and she went to a wall-mounted telephone. “Director Fury, please come to G Lounge. Director Fury to G Lounge, please.” 

Fury arrived in short order, hesitating in the doorway until Nurse DiMauro waved him in. “Everything going okay in here?” he asked. 

Nurse DiMauro glanced at Steve, and then back at Fury. “He’s awake and has a few questions for you. Keep it brief, though. He’s been through a lot, and he needs some peace.” 

Fury nodded, and pulled up a chair to sit beside the sofa where Steve lay. “I’m sorry about what happened earlier, Captain,” he said. “I thought you had already understood the situation. Never intended to give you a shock like that." 

It was inadequate, and it was clear from the look on Fury’s face that he knew it. But it was at least honest, and Steve didn’t have the energy to deal with anything so large as to approach adequate. So he nodded a silent acceptance of the apology and let Fury give him a pat on the shoulder that was clearly meant to be comforting. 

“What happens to me now?” he asked. “There’s no one left, and I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t even know if I’m still in the Army any more. Do they kick you out if you die?” 

Fury shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. If you decide that’s what you want, we can reactivate your commission. That’s not a problem. For the short term, my organization will take care of you.” 

“SHIELD.” 

Fury looked a bit startled, and Steve turned his eyes to indicate Nurse DiMauro. She shrugged at Fury. 

“Someone had to tell him, and I didn’t see you making any immediate plans in that direction. He thought this was a hospital.” 

Fury nodded to her, and turned his attention back to Steve. “Okay, fair enough. Did she tell you what SHIELD stands for?” 

Steve nodded. 

“Good. Then you’ll understand that we have multiple mandates, a significant budget, and we take care of our own. It was a SHIELD expedition that found you, a SHIELD team that revived you, and SHIELD will step up to take care of you until you can be independent again.” 

The thought of being turned loose in this future of garish colors and strange sounds sent a shiver through Steve, and his fingers twitched at the hem of the orange blanket. “What does that mean? What happens to me now?” 

“You’ll stay here in this facility for a few days,” Fury said. “Just until the docs say you’re ready to go. We’ll have someone give you some basic lessons about modern life, and we’ll get you set up with ID and a bank account and a couple of other things. I’ve been arranging an apartment for you so that you’ll have a place to stay, and you can spend some time getting yourself back on your feet. When you’re ready, we can talk about what you want to do moving forward.” 

Moving forward was the last thing that Steve wanted to think about, but he supposed that it was inevitable. People either moved forward or they died, and he clearly wasn’t very good at dying. 

Nurse DiMauro was making hand signals at Fury. Steve managed a weak smile upon seeing that the gesture of a nurse preparing to kick a visitor out of a patient’s room was still the same. Fury caught the signs as well. “All right, DiMauro,” he said. “Almost done here. Captain, we’ll talk again soon, and I’ll try not to spring anything else on you without preparing you first. Before I go, is there anything you need right now?” 

Steve thought for a moment. There were plenty of things that he needed, but it seemed that most of them were impossible to grant, even in the future. He wanted to find out what had happened to his friends and comrades, but perhaps not just yet. If he held off on asking, he might still be able to pretend that he was on a complicated mission very far away, and that he would return to see them at some point when he was finished. His chest hurt, and he wondered briefly if his asthma might be returning, and then he knew the real cause. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” he said softly. 

Fury nodded, and the compassion that Steve had seen in his face the first time he saw him was back. “I understand,” he said. “I’ll make sure that someone is with you when you need it. Don’t worry, Captain. We’ll take care of you.” He gave Steve one last pat on the shoulder, and then rose and left the room. 

Nurse DiMauro sat down in the chair that Fury had vacated. Steve let her take his pulse once more, and he clasped her hand again when she had finished. He lay on the sofa for a while, watching the angle of the sun change through the window blinds. Gradually, the dizziness faded, and Steve was able to sit up without feeling like he wanted to fall over. Nurse DiMauro brought him a glass of water from the pitcher that had been left on the table from his meal with Agent Hill, and Steve drank it gratefully. 

“I think I’d like to look at the city,” he said, when he had drained the glass. 

Nurse DiMauro smiled. “Okay. Stand up slowly, and I’ll show you how to work the blinds." 

Steve folded the orange blanket and pushed himself to his feet. He swayed for a moment, but the dizziness did not return. Nurse DiMauro showed him a small control panel, and he pushed the button labeled “Window.” The blinds parted and drew back mechanically, revealing a view of midtown Manhattan in the brilliant afternoon sunshine. Steve looked down at the city for a while. From this distance, the blinking, glowing signs looked strange but not overwhelming. There were more cars than there had been the last time Steve was in New York, and they moved faster, but it did look more than a little bit like the bustling city that he had left. 

“What do you think?” Nurse DiMauro asked. “Changed much?”

“Some,” Steve said. “Times Square is still there, though. I guess that’s a start. Can I ask you a stupid question?”

“Sure.” 

“If this really is the future, why aren’t there any flying cars?” 

Nurse DiMauro laughed. “I’ve been asking myself that for ten years now.” 

“Guess the future isn’t all it was cracked up to be.” Steve managed a little smile even as his eyelashes grew damp. “Bucky . . . Bucky would have loved to see this.” His throat hurt, and he tried to swallow the pain. 

“Will you tell me a little about Bucky?” Nurse DiMauro asked. “Seems like he was pretty important to you.” 

Steve nodded. “He was everything.” He couldn’t bring himself to say any more. 

After a moment, Nurse DiMauro took his hand. “When you’re ready,” she said. “In the meantime, how about we go get a cup of coffee, and I’ll show you around a bit so you can find your own way when you want to go somewhere.” 

“Okay.” 

Steve turned away from the window and followed Nurse DiMauro out of the lounge and into the smooth, glistening world in which he would have to learn to live.

  

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story! Unfortunately for Steve, SHIELD seems to have become highly invested in bringing back Captain America, but doesn’t realize that what they’ve actually got at the moment is Steve Rogers, a somewhat different person. For my money, the worst thing that they did, even beyond their wacky little stunt with the hospital stage set, was to allow him to wake up completely alone, with no one to guide him back into reality. I suspect that if they’d put him in a modern hospital room, but had a nurse at his side, he might have taken things much better. But, alas, SHIELD is a large institution that, like all large institutions, runs on the Peter Principle. And now Steve has SHIELD-related trust issues that are going to persist for a long, long time.


End file.
